Small Black, Snow MineÂ

[DIMMED GLO-FI] Brooklyn’s Small Black was an also-ran in the great chillwave sweepstakes of 2010, overshadowed by the hype surrounding similarly minded lo-fi electrolytes such as Neon Indian, Toro y Moi and Ernest Greene’s Washed Out, despite serving as the latter’s backing band for a time. In the last three years, those other acts grew up and left their bedrooms, and for its long-gestating second album, Limits of Desire, so too has Small Black. That doesn’t mean the band has improved, mind you. In fact, the glaze of haze smeared across the group’s introductory EP suited its cloudy dance-pop much better than the crystal-clear ’80s production of recent material—new EP Real People included—which reveals the band is really just a more rhythmic xx, yet somehow more boring.